Diana surveyed it all with a lively dislike.  She pitied Lady Lucy and Mr. Marsham because they must live in such a place.  Especially, surely, must it be hampering and disconcerting to a man, preaching the democratic gospel, and looking forward to the democratic millennium, to be burdened with a house and estate which could offer so few excuses for the wealth of which they made an arrogant and uninviting display.  Immense possessions and lavish expenditure may be, as we all know, so softened by antiquity, or so masked by taste, as not to jar with ideals the most different or remote.  But here “proputty! proputty!” was the cry of every ugly wood and tasteless shrubbery, whereas the prospective owner of them, according to his public utterances and career, was magnificently careless of property—­was, in fact, in the eyes of the lovers of property, its enemy.  The house again spoke loudly and aggressively of money; yet it was the home of a champion of the poor.

Well—­a man cannot help it, if his father has suffered from stupidity and bad taste; and encumbrances of this kind are more easily created than got rid of.  No doubt Oliver Marsham’s democratic opinions had been partly bred in him by opposition and recoil.  Diana seemed to get a good deal of rather comforting light on the problem by looking at it from this point of view.

Indeed, she thought over it persistently while she dressed.  From the normal seven-hours’ sleep of youth she had awakened with braced nerves.  To remember her duel of the night before was no longer to thrill with an excitement inexplicable even to herself, and strangely mingled with a sense of loneliness or foreboding.  Under the morning light she looked at things more sanely.  Her natural vanity, which was the reflection of her wish to please, told her that she had not done badly.  She felt a childish pleasure in the memory of Mr. Barton’s discomfiture; and as to Mr. Marsham, it was she, and not her beliefs, not the great Imperial “cause” which had been beaten.  How could she expect to hold her own with the professional politician when it came really to business?  In her heart of hearts she knew that she would have despised Oliver Marsham if he had not been able to best her in argument.  “If it had been papa,” she thought, proudly, “that would have been another story!”

Nevertheless, as she sat meekly under the hands of her maid, smiles “went out and in,” as she remembered the points where she had pressed him hard, had almost overcome him.  An inclination to measure herself with him again danced within her.  Will against will, mind against mind—­her temperament, in its morning rally, delighted in the thought.  And all the time there hovered before her the living man, with his agreeable, energetic, challenging presence.  How much better she had liked him, even in his victory of the evening, than in the carping sarcastic mood of the afternoon!